“He’ll be right up,” the man said. “Have a seat.”

Susan rubbed the towel along her legs, patted down her neck, wrung her hair out again, and then lifted her sweater up, slipped the towel underneath, and, as delicately as she could, blotted her chest and underarms. “Excuse me,” she said. Then she folded the damp towel, set it on the couch, and perched carefully on it. The couch wasn’t real leather anyway.

He sat in the rattan chair. His waders squeaked. “Shouldn’t be long,” he said.

She looked around some more. The whale print was the only marine-related thing in the room. He didn’t seem like much of an aquarium nerd to her.

“So you’re into fish?” she said.

“I have a few aquariums. They’re all in the basement. That’s what your friend was helping me with. They’re running on emergency power now, but the generators won’t last, and once the systems shut down I’m going to have a lot of dead fish on my hands.”

It was suddenly making sense. Heil was the kind of guy who’d get suckered into some sort of massive goldfish airlift. The man probably had Heil doing all the heavy lifting.

The man. She still didn’t know his name.

She held a hand out and smiled. “I’m Susan Ward,” she said.

He leaned forward and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

Then he glanced toward the basement. “I should get back down there,” he said. “There’s a lot to do.”

“I’ll come with you and say hello to Heil,” she said.

He looked at her boots. “It’s deep,” he said.

She ran her hand over her hair—it felt like seaweed. “I don’t think I can get any wetter.”

She followed him to the basement door. There was a big industrial flashlight on the carpet and he picked it up, turned it on, and pointed it down the steep, skinny wooden stairs. “I had to throw the breaker,” he said. “Most flood-related deaths are due to electrocution.”

But it wasn’t dark, exactly. She could see light reflecting on the water.

“I’ve got those IKEA push lights,” he said. “Battery-operated. You just stick them right on the wall.”

“Heil?” Susan called.

“He’s in the aquarium room,” the man said.

“The what?”

“It’s the old root cellar. I’ll show you.”

She could already taste the sourness of old concrete and laundry detergent in her mouth.

She should have just walked home.

“You go first,” Susan said.

“Sure,” he said. They both had to turn sideways for him to get by her and for a moment they were face-to-face, or rather face-to-bottom-of-chin. Then he pressed against the wall and slipped past her.

When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he shone the flashlight back for her to follow. The water came up to just below his knees.